NGO Bedwetting Workshop

Ben Matthews showed up to what he thought was just another NGO workshop last Tuesday, where he would once again share stories and support about his lifelong bedwetting problem and perhaps finally conquer his soggy night demons once and for all. Instead, he was publicly humiliated in what he now calls a “cruel and heartless hoax.”

Matthews, 31, who works as a ‘Community Development Diversity Advisor’ for ‘well known international NGO” had spent weeks attending the group meetings, paying a US$50 per session fee out of the NGO’s emergency petty cash account, and even, on occasion taking homemade jam and other treats.

“I was assigned a special “piss buddy,” which, apparently, was just one more part of the joke,” Matthews said “I would call my piss buddy whenever I woke up to dampened sheets and then he would yell at me and call me names. He said it was all part of the therapy process.”

Then, according to Matthews, his dignity was further soiled when his piss buddy would record his confessions and play them for friends and co-workers over the loudspeakers usually used for Khmer ceremonies.

“Sometimes he would come over and offer to wash my soiled sheets and pyjamas, which were photographed and distributed across the internet. Then at the last meeting, right after I gave my weekly confessional, everyone started laughing at me and suddenly they were throwing adult diapers at me and shooting me with squirt guns filled with urine or lemonade ? I am not sure which. I was so freaked out, I wet myself and ran out before anyone could see me crying.”

Matthew’s ‘love you long-time’ girlfriend Neary Kum En, who actually helped to coordinate the hoax, now admits she feels somewhat guilty about how things turned out and hopes they will be able to patch things up soon as she needs a new telephone this month.

“I really did not mean any harm by it,” Neary said. “I realise I pointed and laughed like the others, but I did it in a loving, loving, play, play, way. I really think Ben is being a little boy about the whole thing, plus my mothers pig is really, really, sick now.

Neary also added, “Besides, it was his boss’s idea. He thought it would be funny, funny.”

The ‘well known international NGO’ has since released funds, from its head office in Rome, for a study and pilot project into the complex causal relationship between; ‘Bedwetting, NGO Employees and Sustainable Mummy’s Boys’ This study is expected to take 3 years, will involve 14 international consultants being flown in and should cost in the region of US$5million. A small forest just outside Stung Treng is being felled to create enough paper for all the reports it will produce.

Lord Playboy Reports

The views in this column are entirely those of Lord Playboy (of Phnom Penh, Sonteipheap and that muddy patch of ground next to the school) they are in no way are representative of Khmer440, its editors or staff, of any Ministry of the Royal Government of Cambodia who employs Lord Playboy, of anybody who thinks that a Daelim is a decent bike, of barangs that never eat in Khmer restaurants, or the mad woman who lives in my car-park. Damn, things will be different when I am running the Country.